The captain, Pedro de Almeyda, had orders to bring another of the king's
sons to Goa, and if refused to
Carry one away by force; but the king
declared that he had only one other son, who was too young for the
voyage, on which Almeyda satisfied himself with Anria Sambo, the king's
nephew, who was carried to Goa, and baptized by the name of Jerome. When
sufficiently instructed in the Christian religion, he was sent back to
his country in a pink, commanded by Emanuel de Andrada, together with
two Jesuits, 100 soldiers, and presents for the king and prince, worth
4000 ducats. They set out in the beginning of February 1618; and being
under the necessity of watering at the _Isola de Cisne_, they found
three ships sunk at the mouth of the river. On landing, twenty
Hollanders were found about two leagues from the shore, guarding the
goods they had saved from the wreck. They made some opposition, but were
forced to submit to superior numbers, and were found to have a large
quantity of cloves, pepper, arms, ammunition, and provisions. Andrada
carried the prisoners, and as many of the valuable commodities on board
his pink as it could contain, and set fire to the rest, though the
Hollanders alleged that they had come from the Moluccas, with a regular
pass.
When Andrada arrived in the port of St Lucia, the two Jesuits came to
him both sick, declaring that it was impossible to live in that country,
where all the men who had been left along with them had died. Andrada
sent the letters with which he was intrusted to the king and prince, by
the servants of Don Jerome; and in return, the king sent 100 fat oxen,
with a great quantity of fowls and honey, and six slaves, but would not
come himself, and it was found that his son had reverted to
Mahometanism. The tribes in Madagascar called _Sadias_ and _Fansayros_
are _Mahometan Kafrs_[16], and are attached to the liberty allowed by
the law of Mahomet, of having a plurality of wives. The king was of the
_Fansayro_ tribe, and was now desirous to destroy Andrada and the
Portuguese by treachery; incited to this change of disposition by a
_Chingalese_ slave belonging to the Jesuits, who had run away, and
persuaded the king, that the Portuguese would deprive him of his
kingdom, as they had already done many of the princes in Ceylon and
India. The Kafrs came accordingly to the shore in great numbers, and
began to attack the Portuguese with stones and darts, but were soon put
to flight by the fire-arms, and some of them slain, whose bodies were
hung upon trees as a warning to the rest, and one of their towns was
burnt.
[Footnote 16: In strict propriety, this expression is a direct
contradiction, is Kafr is an Arabic word signifying _unbelievers_; but
having been long employed as a generic term for the natives of the
eastern coast of Africa, from the Hottentots to the Moors of Zeyla
exclusively, we are obliged to employ the ordinary language.
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